All That They Needed
by Eve Davidson
Summary: Mia muses about life, her daughter, men and boys, her mother, Liberty and Darcy, J.T. and Isabella's father.
1. Chapter 1

It was called lousy luck. Mia shook her head, brushed Isabella's soft, baby-fine hair. 17 years old and a single teenaged mother. Isabella's father was a royal fuck up. J.T. had been great, sweet and kind and funny and he loved kids, was good with kids. But now J.T. was dead. And here she still was in this shit hole apartment with her own mother and her daughter, sandwiched between the generations.

She put a little bow in her daughter's hair, smiled, her eyes crinkling. Her own thick hair was pulled into two French braids. It just had to be out of her way. The guys at school seemed to be divided into two unpleasant groups. The first group thought she was easy and would put out since she had a kid at 15. The first group thought she was a slut. The second group shied away from commitment and didn't want to even date her because of all the responsibility she carried on her slender shoulders.

She kissed Isabella's soft chubby cheek and felt the happiness at having such a beautiful daughter. She loved her more than anything. No one seemed to understand, though. She was still a teenager, still basically a kid in a way. She wanted to do cheerleading and go on dates and study for tests and flirt in the halls and lean against lockers. But she was also a mother. She was responsible for Isabella and Isabella came first. She would miss tests and oral talks and whatever if her daughter needed her. She would forgo dates and cheerleading practice for doctor appointments and trips to the park. She spent her nights chopping up food into bite size pieces and watching teletubbies and reading bedtime stories instead of hanging out at the Dot or in cars making out or at the movies, her hand touching some boy's hand in the popcorn tub.

She frowned, thinking of Darcy. How Darcy had judged her and didn't want her on the cheerleading squad because of Isabella. Darcy was emblematic of that entire group of people who judged her, who looked down their noses at her with pity and disdain. That group who thought they knew the right way to do everything. Get married and have sex and then have a kid, and be sure you have plenty of money. Mia shook her head again, watching Isabella toddle off and pick up a toy. It would be nice to be married, it would be nice to have someone to help her. That person was not Isabella's father or any of the boys at school. They were immature. She was alone in this and so fuck Darcy and her judgmental bullshit.

She thought about Liberty. Liberty gave her baby away. Mia didn't understand how someone could do that. You feel that baby grow inside of you and move, and it became a part of your rhythms, part of your soul. And then when Isabella was born she was so tiny and perfect and Mia had never felt love like that, just a surge of it along with a surge of worry about protecting and guiding this little life. Hadn't Liberty felt the same things? How could she relinquish all of that? It was too big. It was too big to just let it go.

So she had made her choice, the only choice she could have made. Isabella was hers and yet not. She was her own. She was a gift. Mia understood this and smiled her sad smile at her daughter. Who cared about these immature high school boys? One day she'd meet a man, a man who could be all that she and Isabella needed and until then she would be all that they needed. Who cared about Darcy and her legions of brain washed automatons? Her life wasn't theirs to judge.

Maybe it wasn't lousy luck after all, just because her father didn't work out and J.T. died. She still had Isabella and herself, and they'd go on. They'd survive. Doors shut so other doors could open. She tried hard to believe this, tried hard to stay positive even though some days it was hard.

Isabella came back to her, handing her a little toy Elmo and smiling. Mia took it, turned it over in her hands, heard her mother stirring in her bedroom. She'd made hot cereal for Isabella's breakfast, a pot of coffee for her mother. Sandwiched between the generations, wishing someone would make something for her. She went out on the little porch, felt the cool yellow bricks with the palm of her hand.


	2. Chapter 2

She had the evil thought, in the moments before the alarm was ready to go off, that if it was just her she'd get a half hour more sleep. One eye barely open and she could see the numbers on the alarm clock inching toward the braying disruption that was the alarm.

At the sound she would pull herself from the bed, the warmth of the covers, sweet cocoon and into the chill morning air. She walked slowly to the kitchen and started the coffee, made oatmeal for Izzy, leaned over the counter and hugged herself, half asleep.

Time ticked away so fast in the morning, the light seeping into the sky, crawling across the living room rug. She'd go in and wake up her daughter, her little face soft and warm, little eyes opening.

"Come on, honey. Breakfast," Mia said with more cheer than she felt. What she felt was the overwhelming tiredness of always going, always forcing herself to go. To get up, to get Izzy ready, to drop her off at daycare, going to school, cheerleading, doing homework, talking to people, picking up Isabella, picking up her mother at work. Some days just talking to people was too much, their mouths moving and nothing approaching sense coming out.

Stepping into the shower, wishing she could just curl up in the hot spray and go to sleep. Thinking of her cup of steaming coffee, the only thing capable of getting her moving. Laying out the clothes for Izzy and just hoping she wouldn't complain, "I don't like this color, this makes me look fat," which brings a whole new set of worries. Her daughter was three! Already she was thinking of looking fat, the media machine cranked to full volume so that three year olds had self esteem issues and fat thighs. Mia would shake her head, her long dark hair shaking around her round cheeks. In those instances she wondered how she would be able to do this. How could she guide her daughter through this maze she didn't fully understand herself?

But it was easy to set such thought aside in the avalanche of things she had to do. Fill out the daycare paperwork, do her homework, apply to colleges, talk to boys, flirt but not too much, listen to her mother's complaints, read Izzy stories, walk down the halls at school with her head held high, cook supper, make snacks, shield her daughter from the sinister influences seeping so steadily in.

By the time she left the house she felt like she had lived an entire day and sometimes she was ready to crawl into the sheets of her bed again. Clutching her travel coffee mug like a life raft, sipping every so often like a bird in a feeder, holding Izzy's sticky little hand, holding her book bag with her shoulders, the straps weighing her down. Walking and trying not to slip on her high heels, trying not to smudge her make-up, trying not to fall.

"Bye. I love you," she says to Izzy every morning at daycare, glancing beyond her daughter's little head to the drawings on colored paper hanging up on partition walls, static bursts of color, exploding lines and sometimes she can make out dinosaurs and princesses and dragons and castles and race cars and anime dolls but sometimes she can make out nothing at all.

Then she heads up the stone steps to Degrassi, the double glass doors reflecting the day and herself back at her, and she sees a tired 17 year old, a weary 17 year old. And she shakes her head at her reflection and touches her hand to her reflection's cool hand and goes inside.

In the school sounds echo off the lockers in the hallway, and she can hear the mean voices of the jocks and the other cheerleaders, the meek voices of the science nerds. Everyone is clearly labeled for easy identification. She shutters to think of the peeling label on her little jar. 'Teenage mother' 'Slut' 'Screw up'. The labels never have room for any of the positive things. She know this. 'Drug addict', 'Victim', 'Crazy', 'Nerd'. Whatever. She's usually too tired to care.

Each teacher talks about everything they have to do as if this class is the only thing in their whole lives, like her life is devoted to geology. She's lucky if she can glance at the important points at the end of the chapters before she takes the test. She's lucky if she remembers when the test is. Some days she can actually feel herself falling behind.


	3. Chapter 3

The book bag on her shoulders felt heavy, weighing her down. She tottered on her heels. She saw Lucas talking to his friends, smiling and laughing, carefree. Why did he get to be carefree when she had the weight of the world settled firmly between her shoulder blades?

She remembered being 14, falling in love with his devil smile and wicked laugh. Looking up at him as he lowered himself into her, never knowing how her life was about to change. Why did he get to go on with his teenage life like he wasn't a father? She bit her lip. It was because he wasn't a father. He didn't wake up early and stay up late, he didn't make daycare runs and doctor office runs and read little Golden Books until he thought his eyes would start to bleed. He didn't hold little grubby hands and wipe sticky faces and cut the crust off of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He didn't do any of it. He was only a sperm donor.

"Mia," It was Darcy, with her skinny waif face and cool recrimination. She was so damaged in Darcy's eyes. Mia could feel the judgment flowing on to her like the water from a water fall, all those rainbows and water droplets of recrimination.

"Yeah?" Trying to be cool, trying to be a together teenage mom who had everything under control.

"Practice is going long today,"

It was never an option for her. She had to pick up Izzy at daycare. Things couldn't go long. Things were always cut short.

"Uh, but my daughter-"

"I guess that's your problem," Darcy wouldn't give an inch. No one would. No one ever wanted to slip on her high heel shoes. So she just nodded, knowing she'd be leaving early to pick up Iz, leaving early to pick up her mom, racing home to make dinner, to do homework, to read stories and cut out paper dolls. Every day something had to suffer. Cheerleading practice or the report she'd worked a week on and had to miss because Izzy had a fever at daycare. There were all the parties she wouldn't go to and all the dates she wouldn't go on and all the things she had to do getting in the way of the things she would have liked to do, but it was worth it in the end. Every day she worked so hard to make the end good, to make the end worth all the sacrifices of the now.

In the locker room she changed from her sexy school attire to her sexy cheerleader attire, and the sneakers felt good on her weary feet. Screw Darcy. She wasn't answerable to her. Her and her Christian oppression. She leaned over and tied the white laces to her white sneakers and thought about how she hated when people twisted God to their own narrow views. How could she know what was in the mind of God? You couldn't know that. You just had to live your life to the best of your ability, the best that you could even though you felt buried under all the little nagging things you had to do. And doing them didn't matter. They all sprouted back up like weeds the next day, weeds to be ruthlessly pulled from the garden of your life.


End file.
